DPP Shane Drumgold’s CCTV evidence tampering claim ‘vexatious’

Detective Superintendent Scott Moller claims the chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold had embarrassingly confused a Four Corners re-enactment with the real thing.

Superintendent Scott Moller.

The senior police officer who led the investigation of Brittany Higgins’s rape allegations has slammed Shane Drumgold for suggesting that police deliberately destroyed or deleted CCTV footage of Ms Higgins and Bruce Lehrmann, claiming the chief prosecutor had embarrassingly confused a Four Corners re-enactment with the real thing.

Detective Superintendent Scott Moller has in a statement told the Sofronoff inquiry that the inference of corrupt or dishonest behaviour was “vexatious, without any merits and offensive to an extremely committed, hardworking and competent investigation team”.

Mr Drumgold claimed CCTV footage showed Ms Higgins and Mr Lehrmann arriving at Parliament House on the night of her alleged rape. The police were certain the video never existed, but Mr Drumgold was insistent he had personally watched it on a USB drive provided by police but then returned to them.

The Australian has previously revealed that the suggestion of evidence-tampering caused a serious rift between police and the Director of Public Prosecutions.

In a submission to the inquiry, Mr Drumgold said in the footage he recalled “Ms Higgins could be seen swaying behind his (Mr Lehrmann’s) right shoulder. She moved her right hand to a wall as if to stabilise herself.”

Superintendent Moller, however, said it appeared that Mr Drumgold “had confused footage from a Four Corners release where they developed a recreation of the event with the investigators recovered CCTV footage”.

The Four Corners program featured various re-enactments and night-time exterior shots of Parliament House, although none showing the precise scene as described by Mr Drumgold.

Superintendent Moller said the investigating team diverted its efforts and worked for weeks to ­attempt to identify the footage and if such footage ever existed, they had never located it.

“This caused a significant divide between the investigation team and the DPP,” he said.

“These undertones in relation to the investigators’ corrupt or dishonest behaviour continued throughout the prosecution and were entirely without foundation and offensive to our investigation team.”

ACT chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold at home in Canberra home last week. Picture: Liam Mendes

Mr Drumgold told the inquiry that he did not think the footage had been deliberately deleted but that was not the impression of police at the time, and the insinuation caused a further breakdown in an already fraught relationship between the investigation team and the DPP.

“I believe Mr Drumgold’s own actions at this early time alienated the investigators and ACTP management from the DPP,” Superintendent Moller says in his statement.

Mr Drumgold’s co-counsel Skye Jerome said she “was sure” she saw the footage, although they watched it on separate occasions, and told investigators she hoped “nothing unlawful” had happened to the footage.

Ms Jerome said she recalled a woman and a man standing at a gate with a buzzer and walking through the gate.

Her account of what she saw has been partially redacted by the inquiry.

“I recall that the omitted CCTV footage depicted Ms Higgins and Mr Lehrmann [redacted] at APH (Australian Parliament House). I recall that Mr Lehrmann stood in front of Ms Higgins who was a ­little unsteady/shifted her body weight. I recall that I briefly saw the pair [redacted].”

If it existed, the footage would have countered the view of police that Ms Higgins was not as heavily intoxicated – “10/10 drunk” – as she had claimed.

Ms Jerome says in her statement that police had shown her other CCTV footage and “focused their observations of a sober woman entering Parliament House”.

A clearly annoyed Mr Drumgold complained that the missing footage, although not crucial to the case, would have formed part of the trial brief because it was mat­erial to a fact in issue.